Monday, August 8, 2011

Viewers be advised- Dressed bird pics

This post will include pictures of roosters that we killed literally today.  Nothing more gory than what you see at the store.  Some of these guys I was really impressed with and some not.  We finished 14 between Thursday and today so we've been busy....that and we are really slow at it. 
New Hampshire Red (over scalded)
Rhode Island Red
Turken
Barred Rock


speckled sussex
dark cornish
All of these birds are just over 16 weeks old, most of them ranged from 3-4lbs dressed out like this.  We were most impressed with the meatiness of the Dark Cornish, Turken, Hampshire Red, and the Rocks (both Barred and Partridge).  Now the Partridge rocks looked awful once plucked.  You really can't get all those blackish pinfeathers out and it just makes it look bad.  Same with most of the dark birds.  The prettiest dressed birds were the Turken, Hampshire and Speckled.  The Turken has really tough thick skin but was very very easy to pluck. We grilled one along with a Barred Rock after butchering and I don't remember noticing a difference but then again I don't eat skin.

All of these birds had very little breast meat.  Most of the meat was in the thighs with the exception of the Cornish, Turken and Hampshire....they appeared to have more breast meat.  They are a sharp contrast to Cornish X birds you see in the grocery, I can see why people prefer a Cornish X.  I think we may try to raise a few next year.

2 comments:

  1. thank you for posting this! I've been trying to decide on a meat breed chicken and this helps tremendously!

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    Replies
    1. I'm glad it helped, we learned a lot that first year.

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